System restore failure....assistance needed.

I purchase an Asus UX31e with Windows 7 Home Premium for my wife and am having serious problems with system restore, restore point creation:

I’ve been unable to create a system restore point, as an error is generated stating that “the restore point could not be created for the following reason:  This service cannot be started in safe mode (0x8007043C)”. I’ve noticed that the system also fails to create a scheduled restore point as well, with the same error. Event viewer shows 2 different event ID’s associated with the scheduled creation failure: Event 8211 ‘the scheduled restore point could not be created. Additional information: (0x8007043C)’ and Event 8193 ‘failed to create restore point: (Process = C:\windows\system32\rundll32.exe /d srrstr.dll,ExecuteScheduledSPPCreation; description = scheduled checkpoint; Error = 0x8007043C)’. The system isn’t running in safe mode and I’ve checked that the following services are starting and running successfully:  VSS service, Windows Backup service, and Windows installer service. Apparently, there is some part of the process that doesn’t recognize that I’m in an operating environment and not in safe mode. Are there any other services that would indicate to a system process that its in a safe mode environment? Anything else that needs to start prior to process check? I’m at a loss as to what I need to try next. Any help would be appreciated. Thank you